In April 1405 the king's health suddenly collapsed. Early on the morning of the 28, he wrote from his lodge in Windsor Great Park that 'an illness has suddenly affected us in our leg'. He was in such pain that his physicians told him not to ride, and a few days later the condition worsened.
According to a medical treatise by John Arderne, Treatise of Fistula in Ano, Henry suffered from a prolapsed rectum. The remedy advocated by Arderne recommended first bleeding the leg before applying an ointment called 'the green ointment of the Twelve Apostles'. The principal ingredients were white wax, pine resin, aristolochia, incense, mastic, opoponax, myrrh, galbanum and litharge. When this was heated and applied to the prolapsed area, 'it schal entre agayn', whereupon it was dressed to prevent it protruding once more. If necessary, the procedure could be repeated several times.
Arderne had died in 1376, shortly after writing his treatise, but a post-1413 translator of the work added in the margin 'With this medicine was King Henry of England cured of the going out of the lure' (prolapsed rectum).
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